Interview - Clare Stead and Laura Outhwaite
Developer of the Oliiki parenting app, Clare Stead; UCL researcher Laura Outhwaite
Tuesday, August 3, 2021
Findings from a study on the effectiveness of the Oliiki app suggests it has ‘significant benefits’ on parental self-efficacy in the first 1,000 days of life. The research found that mums and dads who used the app over a four-week period had greater belief that they can be successful as a parent.
WHAT INFORMATION CAN PARENTS FIND ON THE OLIIKI APP?
Clare The free-to-download app includes 1,000-plus daily age-appropriate activities for parents to use with their child up to the age of two. Accompanying each activity is an explanation about what to do and how to do it using resources readily available in the home. The app also explains to parents why activities are vital for child development by providing research evidence underpinning the learning.
WHERE DID THE IDEA FOR IT COME FROM?
Clare Having worked as teacher for 15 years with three- to eight-year-olds and then with children in Zambia as an e-learning specialist, I’ve always been interested in the ‘middle of the road’ child. What makes the difference between them and our top-end bright kids who are hungry for knowledge? I wondered what we could do as educators to ignite that passion in those children.
Someone showed me the learning in the first 1,000 days (conception to age two) graph, and that was my light-bulb moment – children’s passion for learning starts early on. I realised I was working with the wrong age range and that I needed to put education at the centre of parenting, so I built the Oliiki app.
HOW DID YOU MEASURE THE APP’S EFFECTIVENESS?
Clare It was important for me to do the research to make sure that what we are putting out is absolutely robust.
Laura and I met at Educate at UCL [a research accelerator programme for education technology]. She asked me what the feedback was on the app. I said the biggest feedback I receive from parents is that they feel more confident after using the app. That’s when we started looking at parental self-efficacy and how it could be measured.
Laura We designed and ran the study in October to November last year. We recruited 79 participants through social media. The only requirement was that they were parents of a child up to the age of six months.
We asked participants to fill in the Perceived Maternal Parental Self-Efficacy Measure questionnaire pre- and post-test, which asks questions like, ‘Do you know when your baby is sad?’ Parents were assigned to a control group or intervention group. For the intervention group, parents were asked to use the Oliiki app for four weeks. We had an active control group who were e-mailed weekly activities, as we thought this was more ethical than giving them nothing. Unlike the app, the activities on the email weren’t necessarily age-appropriate.
WHAT WERE THE RESULTS?
Laura At post-test, both the treatment and control group demonstrated higher self-efficacy; however, the effects were much greater for those using the app, suggesting the intervention worked.
It was important to have a control group as you would expect some natural progression in parental confidence as time goes on, and they allowed us to disentangle those effects.
Clare What we are creating when we have confident parents, who believe in themselves from the beginning, is mums and dads who are going to put education at the centre of their parenting, by accident almost. So that is what the Oliiki app is doing. As a result, I believe it is impacting children’s outcomes, and helping them to be school-ready.
WHY DO YOU THINK THE APP IS EFFECTIVE AT BOOSTING PARENTS’ SELF-CONFIDENCE IN THEIR ROLES?
Clare I think it’s partly because parents don’t know what to do or if what they are doing with their child is appropriate for their age and stage. Also, it’s because the app tells them about the reasons behind the importance of the activities for their child’s development.
The feedback I received from one mum was that it now makes sense to her why she is doing an activity and how it helps her child, which she said made her feel she was doing a good job.
Other parents said the app had affirmed they were doing great as they had planned to do an activity that was listed on there before they even looked at it.
For another parent, Monica, the app helped her overcome her fear of changing nappies. She told us she had become scared of changing nappies because it had become a ‘mechanical event’ which she had to get right. She had a fear of getting it wrong. I said to her ‘what’s your favourite activity?’, and she said the one about nappies, where you take their nappy off and you blow a raspberry on their tummy. She said she did that and her baby giggled. It broke the ice because changing nappies had become so difficult and the baby cried all the time.
She said the app had helped make nappy changing fun, that she now looked forward to it because it’s a time when they play together.
HAS THE APP PROVED MORE POPULAR SINCE THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC?
Clare Yes, it has. I haven’t pushed it. It [the growth of users] has been very organic. We are currently rebuilding the app, based on the study findings, which will launch in September.
At the moment, the main thing is that it works and is making an impact on parents’ lives.
However, the app is clunky, and I want it to be able to do more things. I want it to be whizzy, but without getting complex, as that’s really important. Part of the success of the app has been its simplicity.
